McInerney, Jay

(US 1955– )

McInerney's first novel, Bright Lights, Big City (1984), became the talk of New York and an immediate best-seller. Written in a slick, fast-moving style, the book deals with a Manhattan magazine writer struggling in a whirlpool of plentiful cocaine and endless parties. The grim but funny Story of My Life (1988) stays on the same terrain and tells the story of Alison Poole, a privileged, hedonistic, and directionless New Yorker who speaks in cutting one-liners. The more substantial Brightness Falls (1992) addresses the stock market crash of 1987, but unlike its predecessors, pans beyond the ‘beautiful people’ of the yuppie set to include those who never benefited from the Reagan boom.

Bret Easton Ellis, David Leavitt  BH